HM Revenue and Customs Cock Up

In a bizarre situation that is beyond any attempt at parody, it has emerged today that "two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing," according to the BBC.

Yes, that's right, all of them. That amounts to the name, address, date of birth, national insurance number and, in many cases, bank account details of 25 million people, vanished into the ether because of a blunder by junior officials at HM Revenue and Customs.

The story apparently broke when Chancellor Alastair Darling made an emergency statement to MPs, in which he admitted that the juniors in question had ignored security procedures when they sent the missing CDs to the National Audit Office for auditing. They were sent using the HMRC's internal postal system, operated by TNT, but they were not sent registered or recorded, and failed to reach the addressee at the NAO. HMRC Chairman Paul Gray has resigned over the matter, but there is, as yet, no word of the hapless juniors falling on their swords in sympathy.

Oh boy, what a monumental cock-up! Even if the missing CDs turned up tomorrow, which seems unlikely as they have already been missing since the 10th of November (did anyone look behind the filing cabinets, I wonder?), it would be difficult to overstate the extent of this fiasco.

A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Gordon Brown-Trousers was being lambasted for his cowardice in bottling out of an early election. Last week it was the Home Secretary in the spotlight for failing to 'fess up about 1000s of illegal immigrants being cleared to work in the security industry - including minding the PM's car. Today it is the Chancellor's turn with, perhaps, the most damaging disaster to date - and you can bet we haven't been told the half of it yet!

If the idea of your personal data simply vanishing in the government's internal mail scares you shitless, imagine what it must be doing to the image-obsessed Prime Minister - I don't call him Gordon Brown-Trousers for nothing, y'know! Remember, this is the government committed to introducing - and, indeed, enforcing - a national ID card scheme that will be used to collect and centralise a VAST amount of information about each and every British citizen, whether we want it to or not (and most of us DON'T want it!).

Why on Earth should we trust them with all that sensitive personal data, when they can't even keep tabs on two CDs in their internal post? This government has consistently demonstrated its inability to keep track of fairly tangible things, like illegal immigrants, for eg, even when it's supposed to already have the individuals in question under lock and key. If it can lose something as big as person (actually, several thousand persons), what chance does it have of finding a couple of CDs loaded with highly valuable information? Bugger all, as far as I can make out.

Of this latest shining example of why Gordon Brown-Trousers should vacate Number 10 with indecent haste, the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, said, "This is an extremely serious and disturbing security breach."

Interestingly, only last week, the very same Richard Thomas announced that his office was seeking a new criminal offence for knowingly or recklessly flouting data protection principles in order to deter such incidents from happening. The punishment would be £5,000 in a magistrates' court, or an unlimited fine in Crown courts, the Times reported.

His comments were aimed largely at doctors who have the misfortune to have their laptops stolen. Mr Thomas said: “If a doctor, or hospital [employee] leaves a laptop containing patients’ records in his car and it is stolen, it is hard to see that is anything but gross negligence.”

Yes, I can see how it would be terribly unfortunate if some villain were to learn the awful secret of Aunt Maud's hip replacement. That being the case, I wonder what the punishment should be for losing the personal details of 25 million citizens? Substantially more than £5,000, one would hope.

Yet, in relation to this national disaster of almost unprecedented scale, Mr Thomas is reported to have said, "Searching questions need to be answered about systems, procedures and human error inside both HMRC and NAO." No mention of criminal charges there, then. Mr Thomas obviously knows which side his bread's buttered on!

As for the Chancellor, he hasn't (yet) offered to resign, and he's said to retain the Prime Minister's full confidence. So that will be two pairs of Brown Trousers in Downing St tonight, then.

Billy Seggars.